Walmart Health has seen plenty of action recently.
It’s no secret that Walmart is trying to lower its costs in the healthcare industry.
We already know that Walmart is getting more selective with which providers they allow their employees to see.
In 2019 alone, Walmart piloted several programs designed to lower healthcare costs for its employees:
- Walmart gives workers financial incentives to use higher-quality doctors.
- The retail giant partnered with Amedisys in 2019, one of the largest (and still growing) home health and hospice players, to expand access to home health across the nation.
- Sam’s Club is also offering a pilot program to its members to offer discounts on certain routine care items in the form of bundled services.
- Finally, starting in 2020, Walmart piloted a telehealth program partnering with UnitedHealth and Doctors on Demand. The program allows employees in 3 states to use telehealth for a $4 copay.
Walmart Health primes itself to enter primary care.
In direct competition with the likes of CVS and other direct to consumer primary care-type offerings, Wal-Mart recently decided to make an even more serious push into healthcare by opening up primary care clinics.
Its first clinic site opened in Georgia and looks to offer quite a decent selection of offerings for consumers, including dental, optical, audiology, and other entry-point services for…you guessed it…everyday low prices!
The pilot now has expanded to 2 sites in Georgia, and further expansion is on the way after Walmart’s first two clinics were found performing above expectations.
- In fact, the number of patients coming through the doors is “substantially higher” than what Walmart’s thought would happen.
Some really intriguing things about the Walmart clinics:
- Clinics have separate entrances from the main supercenter.
- They’re run by physicians.
- They involve little to no paperwork – a lot of appointments don’t involve insurance at all (although they do accept it), and scheduling/billing has been outsourced.
- They provide medical, dental, and eye care, along with x-rays and other routine diagnostic services.
- They disclose transparent pricing – the patient knows exactly how much everything will cost.
It remains to be seen what Walmart’s grand business and profitability strategy is with these clinics. But – according to the article – Walmart is pricing these services at less than half as much as they would cost in a traditional setting.
Walmart might be counting on these super-low priced healthcare services as a loss leader to drive traffic to its stores – namely, to fill prescriptions and run other errands.
My main thoughts:
- Will Walmart’s clinics be priced low enough to make a significant impact/disruption of the primary care industry? Or will the clinics simply be another healthcare option in the sea of retail health?
- When hundreds of patients come through those clinic doors each day, how will quality be affected?
- How will Walmart’s strategy affect the margins of other primary care players – urgent cares centers, physician practices, etc?
- Could Walmart solve – or, at the very least, alleviate – shortages in rural areas?
The bottom line.
We might only ever see the Amazon’s, Google’s, One Medical’s, and Teladoc’s of the world in the news headlines, but we can’t forget about the traditional heavyweight giant.
Walmart is about to make some seriously impactful moves into healthcare if this program expands nationwide. Keep an eye on the retail giant as a potentially huge future player in primary care.
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